Forums

What is the best chess book for beginners?

Sort:
Wimpydog44

I'm a beginner, so I need to learn more about chess. What's the best book for me?

CavanPawn

magictwanger

I loved "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Chess".....Very enjoyable and rather entertaining.

RussBell

Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

DrSpudnik
CavanPawn wrote:

This Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess is about the worst book I can imagine. I've seen it and I actually had it at one point. It's just a ton of simple and not very interesting puzzles. Beginners need to learn about the basics of chess: piece development, central control, the elements of tactics (pins, discoveries, skewers, forks...) and vague stuff like space, initiative and so on. Any book that does not have these elements is fairly worthless to a beginner. They'd be better off just looking at GM game collections (from Morphy to Fischer) to see these basic principles in action.